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Being a Team Player: Hunter

Big Bear Butt just posted an outstandingly good post on what the real meaning of being in a party is. It is important for all of us to have the attitude of ‘what can I do to make this party succeed’. The points BBB laid out are very solid and cover each of the three rolls in general. I will look at hunters specifically.

Why? Because I like hunters. I do a lot of druiding these days but I still feel like my hunter is my main. Plus hunters have a lot of tools for helping the party succeed.

Do Good DPS

Of course everyone knows that roll of a good DPSer is to DPS well. Right. But how? Hunters have three very different specs each of them use different abilities as part of their regular rotation. Just because on spec uses a skill a lot does not mean you have any business using it in another. The thing is that hunters are very easy to suck at. By that I mean you can get by and even do somewhat ok while not being any good at all as a hunter. Part of this is because they can do some ‘ok’ damage with just autoshot and a pet. And because their pet keeps them alive a hunter might not be challenged to kill things with any speed. Some classes find it harder to get to 80 while being completely bad at their class. Hunters can do that.

So don’t do that. Take the time to find out what rotation works well and use it. Being ‘good enough’ is not good enough. Doing just find a few shots and say ‘oh but I like how I play’. Just because your damage is high enough to not get your kicked does not mean you are really doing your part to help the group. Yes you can still play Beast Mastery even if that is not the bleeding edge highest DPS. Play any spec you like. But at least take the time to play that spec WELL. Find out how you can tweak your build to get more out of it. If you are mostly doing PVE content, know what talents and glyphs are not very useful for PVE and avoid them. There are a lot of skills that are intended to be mostly useful in PVP. For example talent points that make you and your pet more durable. Those are ok solo. But know that those are almost completely a waste if you are running a lot of instances.

Turn off your pet growl

Seriously, just do it. No, removing the icon from the pet bar is not how you do that. Right click until that glowing boarder goes away.

Get a DPS pet

In instances your bear or turtle are not as effective as a cat or raptor. Look up what pets do better damage and tame one. Don’t chose your pet based on the look of it. Chose based on its damage output. You can swap back to your favorite looking one when you get back to town.

Manage your threat

Hunters played well do gobs of threat. That is why Bliz gave us such great agro management tools. You should get a threat meter and use it.

Keep Feign Death on a handy hot button and be ready to hit it.

Macro your Misdirect

No, just using it sometimes at the start of fights is not enough. Make a macro for it. It is really easy.

First type /macro in the chat window to bring up the interface.

Next click the new button.

Name the macro.

Don’t bother picking an icon, leave it as the default question mark and it will select the right one for you when you are done.

Now, in the big area on the left type this:

/cast [target=focus] misdirect

You are done. Put that on your bar somewhere handy. Now at the start of each run, select the tank, right click them and ‘set focus’. Now any time you press your MD macro it will do it on the tank. There are other ways to set up a macro for it. If you know another one, use that. You can even set one up so it will hit your pet instead if there is no tank focused. Either way, do it.

Why? Simple. Because for a long fights, where you are doing good damage, one MD is not enough. And for rapid pull runs your MD might not be off cooldown at the start of a fight. With a macro you can quickly and easily use MD during a fight without almost zero impact on your DPS.

Just Fake it

Use Feign Death. Use it a lot. Watch your threat meter and use it BEFORE you pull threat. Make sure you stay dead long enough for your threat to drop. If you just hit the button and then start shooting right off it might not have taken effect yet.

Trap Stuff

Learn how to use your traps and be ready to use them. Keep in mind that a particular tank might not like having a target trapped. If they complain, don’t argue, just change what you are doing. No the tank is not to be worshiped or anything, but you are doing this to make their life easier. Anything that helps the tank stay focused and not get thrown off stride is good. If the tank says trapping stuff is messing up his pull then don’t trap stuff. Simple.

Watch that Tab!

Tab target is a handy feature. However, when combined with autoshot it is very dangerous for hunters. Be careful! And be ready with the FD.

Control your pet

The pet is an extension of the hunter. If it goes running off after something it is your fault. No, it is not blizzard’s fault for giving you a crazy pet. There are fast and simple ways to control your pet. Use them. In addition to the button bar three are easy macros and there are also key binds. By default pressing ctrl-2 will cause your pet to return to you. If it starts to run somewhere you don’t want it to, press ctrl-2. Yes, pets can be buggy. But if you had time to reign your pet in and failed to do so then it is not blizzards poor programming that is at fault. It is your fault.

Know how defensive, passive and aggressive settings work and use them as appropriate. Don’t just leave your pet on passive. The pet is a VERY large chunk of your damage output. Leaving it on passive to make things easier for you is lazy and a huge disservice to your fellow party members. Don’t do it. If you can’t control a pet, go roll a mage. You will find if you try that controlling your pet can become second nature. But you can’t get better if you don’t try.

For most situations, putting your pat on ‘defensive’, being fast with ctrl-2, and carful with tab targeting things will solve most pet control problems.

LET THE TANK PULL

Misdirect is great. Super great. But it lets us hunters get away with doing some amazingly rude and annoying things. It lets us start fights and not instantly die. Try to avoid the temptation to do that. You can push it a little by starting shooting just as the tank engages but try not to start shooting just BEFORE the tank engages. Doing that may throw the tank’s pull off. Most of the time it is no big deal but it can be annoying to the tank and that is simply not helpful. You are making harder the hardest job in the party. Don’t do that for a few extra points of on the meter. It is just not worth it.

Cut it close? Sure! Learn the tanks rhythm and pull style and adapt your play to it. You can be right on their tail with some nice hefty damage but reign it in just enough that you ARE following their lead and not setting your own pace.

Being an Asshat or being an Asset

With MD and FD plus wearing mail (to say nothing of traps) hunters can get away a very large amount of being an asshat without actually dying. Don’t do it. Just because you lived does not mean you are not on the rest of the parties ignore list now.

Those same tools can be very effective and helping a party succeed. You can save a healer with traps. You can really boost a poorly geared tank’s threat output and keep agro on them. You can MD whole packs of adds that the tank failed to notice and get them over to the tank. You can be a tanks best friend or their worst enemy. Instead of taking pride in only your recount score and in the tears of QQ why not take pride in saving the day?

There are a lot of hunters out there but only a few really good ones. And ‘really good’ huntering is not defined by recount.

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7 Responses

“try not to start shooting just BEFORE the tank engages. Doing that may throw the tank’s pull off.”

YES THIS VERY MUCH

It’s especially bad in Forge of Souls heroic where the mobs have such a large aggro radius, and are quite spread out so you need to pull carefully. I’ve had it a few times where the hunter thought (I guess) he was doing me a favour by raining a misdirected Volley on a pack. Unfortunately that meant they started running towards me before I’d even put DnD down, and were then all over the place because I had no solid threat on them.

I also really need an addon that puts an alert in party chat when a hunter’s pet Growls. The only one I can find is Growl Alert, which apparently stopped working in patch 2.4😦

Forgot to add: the other problem with a pack misdirected on you unexpectedly, besides throwing you off your stride, is that the other DPS usually take that as their cue to open up with the AoE too, making things even worse.

Quite a change from the days of BRK and the arguments in favour of hunters pulling over tanks, due to the superior aggro management skills such as aborting a bad pull (FD) and transferring aggro to the tank once the pull is successful (MD / FD etc.)

Well not really… if the tank knows you are doing it. The problem is mostly caster packs and the fact that if the pull is started before the tank is close or ready the casters mobs and the melee mobs get spread out more. In a tight knit group where they know each other’s play styles all bets are off. As with most group advice these days it is targeted at random anonymous pugs full of people with poor group etiquette.
It use to be that good hunters were the pull masters. I think ever since they changed how ‘defensve’ pet mode works many hunters don’t even know what a pull is. Pull? You just start shooting, right? Heh.

If the tank is ready for it and the hunter knows what he is doing you can still pull off some outstanding things. It is one of those things that is technically better on paper but in most parties, isn’t. Tanks have so few ranged agro options that unless the hunter knows that specific pull really well he is likely to make things harder.

I am not a proponent of the kill-shit-as-quickly-as-possible strategy; I prefer to minimize risks and as such.

It is perfectly fine to bring a tanking pet to an instance when the tank and/or the healer do not grossly overgear the content.

Do turn growl off but you may want to turn it back on for a few seconds at time if the tank is in danger of dying. Soaking off a few hits to give time for tank’s health to take a significant jump upward reduces the risk of a wipe.

A tenacity pet can tank an heroic; my gorilla did it and my stamina gear score is 1215 according to wow-heroes. I am saying you should have your pet tank instances but if the tank dies, your tenacity pet CAN and SHOULD tank the mobs (OK, I may tank-kite them if I am the only DPSer left but learning this technique on the fly offers some challenges).

If you use distracting shot followed by deterrence and, a few seconds later, feign death can save your party from a wipe.

Peeling off a mob from a pack and kiting it while the group handles the rest of the mobs can be a good strategy. If you want practice kiting, ask your guildies to kill the trash up to the first boss in an instance and then solo it. Or attack a pack of 3 non-caster mobs by yourself in the tight confines of a dungeon. Fun, and usually far from trivial.

A freezing trap can be dropped in front of your healer as a precautionary measure if your tank has trouble holding aggro. It won’t be needed almost always but after 2 or 3 pulls, i guarantee any smart healer is aware of the trap and will make use of it if he or she pulls healing aggro.

Position yourself in a way you can see your healer. If a mob is hitting your healer, pull it away and trap, offtank, or kite it as long as necessary. The tank may complain (“I was taunting it”) but in my experience, healers generally only pull aggro if they heal too quickly in the pull (when mobs have separation) or if the tank has aggro managment issue. The second is far more common and I don’t trust these tanks to always taunt mobs off the healer.

I am not saying her what Reversion wrote is not generally true; it is. All I am saying is be aware of your group’s gear level and capabilities, and decide how best you can complement them.

That is certainly true. Generally it is best to give the tank the time to grab the mob back… but it is unfortunately not uncommon for tanks to simply not see that stray mob at all. Particularly at low levels. It is a tricky balance to strike, saving the healer and making the run work and letting the tank do their job without distraction. Usually it is obvious when a tank is totally fail. Those times a hunter is invaluable for keeping the run alive by saving the healer of storing mobs. The annoying ones were where the tank sucks but does not think he sucks. He only saw you pet tanking the mob and did not see the mob omnomnoming the priest.